Do Necromancers Destroy Souls?

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[OctopusWilson]

Hey hey, chill! I'm a NECROMANCER, I just desecrate corpses! I dont mess with souls man, be cool!

[ChestOfDoom]

In my games I say that it's like a fading copy of the original. Like looking at their soul on the waybackmachine.

[OranIsGone]

My perception is that the soul is separated from the body once death comes. Stuff like Revivify is basically rejoining the soul before it reaches another plane, and Resurrection or similar spells pull the (willing) soul back from beyond the Veil. Speak With Dead does something similar, but it's something like ringing up the soul, and not actually bringing it back.

Animate Dead is just imbuing magic into an object, which in this case, is a corpse, and that magic moved the object around like a puppet, as you explained.

[teamcyeborg]

I see Animate Dead as "Animate Objects, but for corpses", so the soul is probably off in whatever afterlife it's taken up residence in as you use its meat robot for your army

[jacqueenie]

Here are some interpretations I've heard for specifically animate dead:
- Placing mana into bodies for Puppetry
- Taking a violent soul and placing it into the body
- Taking the soul of the original body and forcing them back into the body
- Having someone sign a writ to have their soul animate their body after death
- Bargaining for a willing soul to enter the body to serve you.
- A deity sending the spirit of one of their worshippers to enter a corpse you control

[alexanderwagner]

My DMs explanation is that a soul that leaves the left a kind of soul residue behind which a necromancer can uses to reconstruct a pseudo soul with his necrotic energy.

[Kopenich]

The designers have often given simple answers to questions like this: It does what it says.

It animates the dead, it doesn't reanimate a formerly living thing, it doesn't soul crush, it doesn't trap their soul in their dead body, it takes something dead and animates it.

[apprenticej]

My funniest moment I’ve had from a party is when I as a DM had a Dragonborn Wizard as a player who casted Simulacrum on himself for the party’s plan to fight an Ancient Dragon and then after the fight the party had a heated philosophical debate on whether or not the Simulacrum could be considered a living sentient being because it has the memories of the person you cast it on but it can’t form new memories and the Wizard started to have an existential crisis and basically made the Simulacrum go into retirement and he vowed never to cast the spell again.

[HappyNBoy]

"Just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Also, this reminds me of an idea I saw where a zombie and a ghost of the same guy are buddies or something.

[Alex-wobs]

I always assumed Animate dead simply was like possessing the body, maybe keeping it unable for the host to get back into their body, but not destroying the soul

[GamePandaXXL]

I have researched this aswell. It’s really easy. Read the flavor text for Skeletons in the MM. They can still be resurrected and that banishes the vile spirit. Because Animate Dead just grabs a bit of the Shadowfell and puts it inside the Bones.

[dreadwoe]

Animate dad says nothing about not being able to be resurrected after casting it. Thus, if you say that animate dead destroys the soul, then you can resurrect somebody whose soul is destroyed which doesn't exactly make any sense.

[raphaelregnault]

Well, my pov is built upon old dnd lore, interpretation of Vampires' interaction with the Resurrection spell and an idea from The Order of the Stick web comic that I really liked. Basically it goes like this, at least in my current campaign.

When you create an undead, you bind a soul to the body, but not necessarily the body's actual former soul. It isn't able to express itself unless the undead is intelligent (ie 8 int at least). What happens is you draw energy from the negative energy plane in order to do it, which twists the soul into becoming evil as long as binded, and its alignment is restored upon destruction of the undead. But the process doesn't destroy the soul, it just enslaves it.

[thomasfrye]

I like the concept, but more as a plot detail. Rather than destroying the soul, you could temporarily cut off the soul’s ability to return to the body, maybe as a special ability of a powerful necromancer, to cut off players from revivifying a zombie into its former life, maybe even give some buildup earlier that doing so was a historical way people have dealt with necromancers, and find a journal in an earlier dungeon previously inhabited by this necromancer on his quest to bypass this.
Maybe throw in a con save on the zombies in the dungeon with this method to not allow the soul back in.
Describe the zombies in the midpoint a little differently, emphasizing they seem off. Maybe they have a bioluminescence that isn’t normal, maybe some features are twisted, and have the final ones even more twisted. Might be a fun quest line, if you want to go further maybe a good start to a main quest

[Mister_Cy]

As far as I know the soul in dnd (this depends on edition) will be sent to one of the outer planes, I’m pretty sure that In lore you are basically grabbing a “soul” (creature from the negative energy plane) that will inhabit the corpse until the spell ends or it’s destroyed.

[cloud]

For those curious, Pathfinder specifies that animating dead forcibly binds a soul to their corpse, and keeps it from the cycle of death, thus why the Goddess of Death hates Undead. It's also worth noting that all necromancers and undead are Evil Aligned, due to the soul torture and negative energy magic.

[Ipanophis]

The Dead can be Raised.
Undead cannot be Raised.
Petitioners exist regardless of their material plane's body.
Incineration doesn't prevent Resurrection or being Raised; if you regenerate or create a new body before casting.

So the answer is: No. The soul is not affected beyond severing the bond with the animated corpse.


Further, it's the Silver Cord that is severed. They no longer have a path back, thru the planes, to their corpse. Unless they choose to Possess their belongings or something near there dead body. In which case, a Raise Dead casted on a no longer animated Corpse, could be rebond to its old body because it is present on this plane and can see their chance being cast.

[phoenixgaming]

Thank you so much for this short i appreciate everything cinder!

[nvfury]

The rules (at least used to) have an answer for this. The soul is unaffected, and resurrecting an undead brings them back to life (except in special cases, like

[philipmeade]

The soul as a magically tractable thing is a really interesting part of DnD. Every setting is probably going to treat souls a little differently, but there are a bunch of spell mechanics in core DnD that interact with souls and assume they exist in the first place.

In a way, it is strange that a soul is never defined. I don’t need DnD to define other parts of my PC’s being, like a brain or an arm, but there isn’t a modern unified understanding of a soul (Or agreement that they exist).

At the same time it would feel just as odd for DnD’s rules to tell me what a soul is… weird dynamic.